linguoboy wrote:Pretty much. The dative inflection -e (as well as the final shwa in other words like müde) is colloquially called the "Lutherisches e" in southern Germany because the dialects there dispensed with it long ago.

Maybe that's why Yiddish doesn't have it; I've always noticed that it lacks -e where German has it, like in the example of müde. The Yiddish cognate is מיד (mid).

I don't know the details of why Luther decided to retain a distinct accusative masculine singular inflectional category when every German dialect I'm familiar with lacks that, too.

If you mean anything changing in the masculine singular accusative, in Yiddish, it's the only time any adjectives in the accusative differ from nominative:

neut.

fem.

masc.

גרויס, גרויסע

גרויסע

גרויסער

sing. nom.

גרויס, גרויסע

גרויסע

גרויסן

sing. acc.

But neither German nor Yiddish has an acc. masc. sing. form different from the nom. Yiddish nouns in the singular rarely decline.

linguoboy wrote:Pretty much. The dative inflection -e (as well as the final shwa in other words like müde) is colloquially called the "Lutherisches e" in southern Germany because the dialects there dispensed with it long ago.

Maybe that's why Yiddish doesn't have it; I've always noticed that it lacks -e where German has it, like in the example of müde. The Yiddish cognate is מיד (mid).

Apparently it only survived in the spoken language in a narrow band of Central German dialects--which happened to include the one Luther spoke. However, since this feature was also found in Middle High German, it had more prestige than other dialectal features.

Viridzen wrote:

I don't know the details of why Luther decided to retain a distinct accusative masculine singular inflectional category when every German dialect I'm familiar with lacks that, too.

If you mean anything changing in the masculine singular accusative, in Yiddish, it's the only time any adjectives in the accusative differ from nominative:

Is that chiefly a feature of Standard Yiddish or is it widespread in the dialects as well? It's notable in this circumstance that Yiddish lacks an accusative/dative distinction in the 3S masculine personal pronoun.

"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

Viridzen wrote:I said earlier that Vandalic, Gothic, Hebrew, Cornish, Prussian, Burgundian, and other once-dead languages now being revived would be "reconlangs", so half natlangs and half conlangs. A conlang itself is entirely invented, not a reconstruction based on any surviving--scanty or not--bits of a language.

No conlang is "entirely invented". They all, of necessity, incorporate features which are derived from existing natlangs. On the basis of lexicon, they are divided into a priori and a posteriori conlangs according to whether the lexicon is invented (a priori) or derived from an existing language or languages (a posteriori). You could, if you wanted, make the same distinction on the basis of morphosyntax or phonology as well.

All standard languages are, to some extent, conlangs. The language Luther translated the Bible into was not spoken by anyone, though written forms very close to it were in use in Saxony. But it gradually acquired speakers and now we have millions of people whose native language is Standard German (or a variety very close to it). Hebrew has reached this stage as well; Cornish is not quite there yet.

According to a website about conlangs you are wrong:

A conlang is thus a language for human (or other sapient) beings that was designed by a single individual or a work group, rather than being the product of centuries of cultural evolution as "natural" languages (natlangs) are.

If we would revive Gothic, it wouldn't be designed by me or by the others which want to revive it by me, as all the material is based on what Wulfila has passed down to us, and unless he and the Ostrogothic king which he has written it for spoke some kind of conlang Gothic, it wouldn't be a Conlang. We have also the Skeireins which was written by another Goth in the same kind of Gothic as Wulfilas, so that actually gives proof that it is most likely that this written Gothic was the daily Gothic language.

This Vandalic however would be almost entirely constructed and more or less be a conlang.

About your definition, schoolchildren learn Cornish and Manx in schools, they actually learn in the languages. Also their language is not acknowledged so I already read an article in which it said that Manx schoolchildren sent a letter to, I believe it was the UN, that they speak no language.

I really doubt if Cornish and Manx are conlangs in your definition, as they are used. Otherwise you might be right. Hmmm, so we would need to get real speakers in order to revive Gothic? That will be hard, I think the closest we will get is small speaker communities, but at least our language won't be a complete conlang which isn't based on too few material.

A conlang is thus a language for human (or other sapient) beings that was designed by a single individual or a work group, rather than being the product of centuries of cultural evolution as "natural" languages (natlangs) are.

Who is Jörg Rhiemeier that we should accept his definition of "conlang" as the definitive one? Moreover, what specifically about his definition do you think refutes what I say above?

GothicSp wrote:If we would revive Gothic, it wouldn't be designed by me or by the others which want to revive it by me, as all the material is based on what Wulfila has passed down to us, and unless he and the Ostrogothic king which he has written it for spoke some kind of conlang Gothic, it wouldn't be a Conlang.

They may not have spoken it, but they did write it. The syntax of Ulfilas' translations follows that of the Greek originals slavishly. We also know that he coined new words and modified the meaning of existing ones in order to represent concepts foreign to Gothic civilisationo.

GothicSp wrote:We have also the Skeireins which was written by another Goth in the same kind of Gothic as Wulfilas, so that actually gives proof that it is most likely that this written Gothic was the daily Gothic language.

Not if the author was familiar with and trying to imitate Ulfilas' Gothic. The Skeireins isn't recipes or letters home, it's a commentary on the Bible. Why wouldn't it be written in the same sort of Gothic Ulfilas uses for his incomplete Bible translation?

A conlang is thus a language for human (or other sapient) beings that was designed by a single individual or a work group, rather than being the product of centuries of cultural evolution as "natural" languages (natlangs) are.

Who is Jörg Rhiemeier that we should accept his definition of "conlang" as the definitive one? Moreover, what specifically about his definition do you think refutes what I say above?

You say that a conlang is any constructed language or designed language, even if it was a natural language before. This would means that Hebrew was in the beginning a conlang, while it was completely based on an existing language, there were just new words coined and some words taken from other languages

GothicSp wrote:If we would revive Gothic, it wouldn't be designed by me or by the others which want to revive it by me, as all the material is based on what Wulfila has passed down to us, and unless he and the Ostrogothic king which he has written it for spoke some kind of conlang Gothic, it wouldn't be a Conlang.

They may not have spoken it, but they did write it. The syntax of Ulfilas' translations follows that of the Greek originals slavishly. We also know that he coined new words and modified the meaning of existing ones in order to represent concepts foreign to Gothic civilisationo.

I agree that Wulfila designed new words unknown to Gothic like Barbarus, but the majority of the words which he used were originally Gothic. Our aim in reviving Gothic also isn't to get the 100% language of the Goths, our goal is to speak a language which is most similar to the language which the Goths spoke based on the sacral Biblical language of the Goths which is left to us. As Wulfila has written the Bible for the Goths to be understood, it is likely that most used words could be understood by Goths. By the way, modifying the meaning of existing words is exactly how we are doing the same as Wulfila, but for this time. We use 'waúrdabokos' for the word dictionary for example, based on the Germanic combination of 'words + book' which can be found in: German (Wörterbuch) Dutch: (woordenboek) Swedish: (ordbok). This is also how we form most new words, by doing it in the same way as other Germanic languages.

GothicSp wrote:We have also the Skeireins which was written by another Goth in the same kind of Gothic as Wulfilas, so that actually gives proof that it is most likely that this written Gothic was the daily Gothic language.

Not if the author was familiar with and trying to imitate Ulfilas' Gothic. The Skeireins isn't recipes or letters home, it's a commentary on the Bible. Why wouldn't it be written in the same sort of Gothic Ulfilas uses for his incomplete Bible translation?

Because it was written in a different time, there are for example certain changes in morphology in Gothic for later centuries, while, if it was based completely on Wulfilas Gothic, they shouldn't have changed the grammar. There are also changes in certain letters for known words so that we know that most likely certain phonological changes developed so that they had to use a different writing-form. The changes also occur regularly and aren't mistakes.

Maybe they aren't learned in schools right now, but after 1 generation when people fed up their children in the school-Manx or school-Cornish they learned, the school will actually teach children in a natural language which will be learned in school, as children learn about all kinds of subjects like geography and IT in school, not in home.

GothicSp wrote:but at least our language won't be a complete conlang which isn't based on too few material.

I'm going to ask this kindly, do not think I'm getting mad: are you implying that Vandalic will be bad-off since it's not attested enough? I've shown above that I'm perfectly capable of creating words based on what we do know, which is quite a lot. (Never did get a comment on that, though.)

GothicSp wrote:but at least our language won't be a complete conlang which isn't based on too few material.

I'm going to ask this kindly, do not think I'm getting mad: are you implying that Vandalic will be bad-off since it's not attested enough? I've shown above that I'm perfectly capable of creating words based on what we do know, which is quite a lot. (Never did get a comment on that, though.)

The problem is that you are basing Vandalic on assumptions of Proto-Germanic words and words looking like Ǵothic, while you often don't have the Latin equivalent of a word. The only way in which you can do this in a reliable way is by having complete certainity that your word-translations are the right ones, you can't be sure that a word means something because it looks like it, as it is normal in Germanic languages that a similar word can have a completely different meaning. For instance the German 'bellen' which means 'to bark', but the exactly same word means 'to call' in Dutch. This is a different meaning and can happen in Vandalic too. With Gothic it's quite different as we have a Bible translation of the words, so that we can be pretty sure that the translations of the words mean what they suppose to mean, as Wulfila wouldn't have translated them in that way if they didn't have a similar meaning.

GothicSp wrote:but at least our language won't be a complete conlang which isn't based on too few material.

I'm going to ask this kindly, do not think I'm getting mad: are you implying that Vandalic will be bad-off since it's not attested enough? I've shown above that I'm perfectly capable of creating words based on what we do know, which is quite a lot. (Never did get a comment on that, though.)

The problem is that you are basing Vandalic on assumptions of Proto-Germanic words and words looking like Ǵothic, while you often don't have the Latin equivalent of a word. The only way in which you can do this in a reliable way is by having complete certainity that your word-translations are the right ones, you can't be sure that a word means something because it looks like it, as it is normal in Germanic languages that a similar word can have a completely different meaning. For instance the German 'bellen' which means 'to bark', but the exactly same word means 'to call' in Dutch. This is a different meaning and can happen in Vandalic too. With Gothic it's quite different as we have a Bible translation of the words, so that we can be pretty sure that the translations of the words mean what they suppose to mean, as Wulfila wouldn't have translated them in that way if they didn't have a similar meaning.

All we can do is assume the meanings of the Vandalic words, but some are pretty obvious. We assume based on Gothic equivalents and the presumed meaning of the Proto-Germanic words, and that's pretty certain, but others are just so obvious. The word -riks appears on the names of kings, and in all other Germanic languages with this word, it means "king" or "ruler", so it's fairly obvious that it means this, too.

I have a major announcement to make. I'm compiling an English-Vandalic thematic dictionary. I'm basing it off of the ones at the back of "Deutsch-gothisches Wörterbuch" by Oskar Priese, so I can see the Gothic words and use their Proto-Germanic ancestors to base the Vandalic cognates on, since the two have to be very similar.

When I have more material, I'm going to make a website for Vandalic. I'm also going to write a simple story about going to the woods and finding all kinds of things in Vandalic. I'm calling it "Wat søe'ch in e Valt?" which means "What do I see in a Forest?"

Also, I'm going to test more examples of the language on viewers, with cognates in other languages. How are these?: